Urbano Lugris

URBANO LUGRÍS GONZÁLEZ (La Coruña, 1908-1973).
"In the light of the moon", 1965.
Ink on paper.
With poem by the artist.
Size: 44 x 33 cm; 64 x 53 cm (frame).

Urbano Lugris began his artistic training under the influence of Nacho Viéitez, a man whose purpose was to encourage the practice of painting in the new generations. He abandoned his studies as a mercantile expert in La Coruña to move to Madrid in 1930, where he joined the Pedagogical Missions, with which he toured several Spanish cities designing costumes and sets for the theater La Barraca. During this period he met Federico García Lorca and Rafael Alberti. During the civil war he participated as a volunteer in the Republican army, going to the front of Asturias. After the end of the war in 1954 he founded in La Coruña the magazine Atlántida, with his friends Mariano Tudela and José Mª de Labra, in which he actively participated, writing articles and poems, as well as numerous illustrations and designing the front cover. In 1965 he moved to Vigo where he died on December 23, 1973. In 1997 the largest exhibition dedicated to Urbano Lugrís, curated by Rosario Sarmiento and Antón Patiño, was held at the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid and at the Auditorio de Galicia in Santiago de Compostela. On the occasion of this exhibition, an important book-catalog of the exhibition was published, as well as a facsimile of the magazine Atlántida. In 2007 the book by Antón Patiño Urbano Lugrís, "Viaje al corazón del océano" (Journey to the heart of the ocean) was published. Lugrís was an almost self-taught painter whose pictorial work reflects a predilection for marine themes, portrayed with an atmosphere of dreamlike and idealized character. His pictures are almost always painted on board in small and medium formats. He was influenced by his godfather, the writer Francisco Tettamancy y Gastón and by concepts of Italian metaphysical painting, especially Carrá and Chirico, and French surrealism, the paintings of Tanguy and Magritte. Some authors wanted to relate him to Dalí, based on the use of blue as the main color in his paintings, but this detail is not taken from the Catalan, but from Platinir.